


Home

by usssamwell



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied Genocide, It’s Tarsus, Mentions of Death, Poor Jim, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tarsus IV, There’s no real graphic descriptions but it is implied a bit, i say implied, one day I will stop hurting Jim, today is not that day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 22:36:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13936857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usssamwell/pseuds/usssamwell
Summary: There used to be a time where Iowa felt like home. After all he was born there, grew up there seeing the endless fields and the long stretches of dirt, went to the dances and spoke to old Joe at the hardware store whenever he went into town. So it should feel like a home, it should be his home, was his home; Iowa isn't his home anymore.-A brief look on Jim’s feelings of Iowa now after returning back from Tarsus IV and the impact it had on him.





	Home

There used to be a time where Iowa felt like home. After all he was born there, grew up there seeing the endless fields and the long stretches of dirt, went to the dances and spoke to old Joe at the hardware store whenever he went into town. So it should feel like a home, it should be his home, was his home; Iowa isn't his home anymore. When he was a kid Jim used to love going to the corn mazes with his mother and Sam. The ears would stretch up towards the sky and he would run away trying to find his way out with laughter on his lips. He worms his way out now with the memory of screams on his tongue and a sour after taste of rotting wheat. The corn looms over him and all he can remember is the way it closed down on him and the younger ones that seemed to follow his every step. It wasn't about finding your way back out then. It was about getting lost. Losing yourself in the endless, withering rows of maize in hopes that you wouldn't be dragged out next. It isn't withering now, back in Iowa, but it might as well be.

 

If it was just looking at the stuff Jim thinks he would be able to cope being stuck in that dusty town, he could swallow it down and deal with the dread pooling in his stomach, but it isn't just the sight that haunts him. It's the stench of death that lingers alongside it. It clings to the air and everything it touches; sometimes he forgets that he even managed to escape. Somehow that smell plastered itself to his skin and followed him through the vacuum of space all the way back to Earth. He's scrubbed his skin more times than he can count. Watched his fingers bleed because the smell still clung to them when it shouldn't. Nothing makes it go away. The smell is the worst part. It hangs in his nostrils. He wakes sometimes and swears he can still smell the smoke. Jim is ashamed to say it takes him too long to remember that there are no chimneys or ash clouds above his head now.

 

The first harvest back was the worst. As the fields began to shrink so did Jim. He shrunk in on himself, as if he too was being harvested. It was like the smell of death was mingling in with the dirt and the crops and the sweat off his brow, and it made him sick to his stomach. It reminded him of the heat of the Tarsus sun beating down on his exposed back. The gruelling heat blistering his endless shrinking body. He had lost his shirt after he had wrapped one of the children in it. They deserved to be buried as if they still meant something because goddamnit they did. If to no one else they did to him. They deserved better than to be wrapped up in Jim’s dirty shirt and buried under a pile of rocks, the dirt being too hard to break. He didn't do enough to save them and now, every time the sun hits his brow, he is reminded of that day and the helpless, glazed over eyes that stared up at him. Of all the others he had to bury and the ones he had to leave behind. He wishes he could have done more.

 

Sometimes Jim has to stop himself from shouting out in fear when he sees a kid play too close to the edge of the corn. They are laughing and cheering but Jim can't help but worry. Little Tammy had played too close too. That's how the soldiers got her. Dragged her off to be taken care of like the rest of them. She never came back. Her screams still interrupt his dreams. These kids have the rest of their life ahead of them, they should be able to play without the weight of the world on their backs. To be able to run through the fields and play in the dirt tracks by the house. They don't have to figure out how to fashion weapons out of sticks or how long they can survive without food but Jim did. He did and now he's paying for it. Sometimes he's envious of their carefree smiles but he wouldn’t ever rob them of them; Jim hopes their smiles never die out.

 

He wonders sometimes if Tarsus is the reason he loves the stars so much now. Before he loved the Iowa sunset, the bursts of colour in the evening sky, but now it reminds him of Kronos and the fire burning in his eyes. Jim remembers hiding Riley behind him as Kodos cackled from his steps, the flames glittering on each side. There was no warmth in those eyes but they still shone a mixture of oranges and yellows. The night sky is cold. The air is crisp in a way that it is void of all smell; it's pretty much void of anything really. The light that shines down is white and calming like the medbay lights; he thinks of the nurse that held his hand until he got back to Earth so that he never felt alone. Space isn't Iowa and it definitely isn’t Tarsus. It is infinite and cold and so very, very quiet. Back then it was the only peace he could find amongst it all; the silence of space. There’s on old Earth saying that ‘in space no one can hear you scream’ and Jim wonders, just wonders, if that is true. Maybe in space the screams inside his head will finally know peace. There chaos wouldn't plague his every step. He could run and run and run and never have to run out of places to hide. It's a blank canvas, a new beginning; a place to call his own.

 

Iowa isn't his home anymore. It's angry. Painted with images of things he would sooner forget. Tarsus was never even his home in the first place. Earth feels more so but he can't stop the itch beneath his skin yearning for space. In space he wouldn't feel so listless, it would be like he finally has a purpose other than survive. As the sun sets across the plains Jim counts the seconds pass him by. It's not long now before he can leave that godforsaken place and the lingering looks of pity that follow him everywhere he goes. He only has to watch the moon rise a few more times before he can be in San Francisco and then at Starfleet and then? The stars. It won't be long before he can kiss the dirt and the stench of harvest goodbye and make his way through the stars with laughter on his lips just like he did all those years ago. Soon, Jim tells himself, very soon, he will be home.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so very sorry, Jim. You deserve to smile and all I do is cause you pain.


End file.
